RICHMOND, Virginia — Virginia voters will decide a United States Senate race and all 11 of the state’s House seats on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, in an election that has already drawn unusually heavy early participation and that will help shape control of the House of Representatives. At the top of the ballot, Democratic Senator Mark Warner is seeking a fourth term against Republican Bert Mizusawa, a retired Army major general. Down the ballot, the most closely watched House contest is the rematch in the 2nd District between Republican Representative Jen Kiggans and former Representative Elaine Luria, a race rated a toss-up by the Cook Political Report and leaning Democratic by other forecasters. No race in Virginia has been decided yet, and no result should be treated as known until ballots are counted after polls close at 7 p.m. on Election Day.
Virginia’s ballot also carries three proposed constitutional amendments, on reproductive freedom, marriage equality and voting rights, which are described briefly later in this article as context, not as the main story. The Senate and House contests are the focus here, because they are the races that connect Virginia most directly to the national fight for Congress. Virginia’s current House delegation is split six Democrats to five Republicans, so a change in even one or two seats could matter in a House where the national margin is expected to be close. The Senate race, by contrast, is rated far less competitive than the House battlegrounds, and the contrast between the two levels of the ballot is itself part of the Virginia story.
What Virginia voters will decide on November 3
Every Virginia voter will see the Senate race and a House race on the ballot, along with the three constitutional amendments. Virginia has 11 House districts, and while most of them are rated as safe or likely holds for the incumbent party, at least three have drawn sustained national attention: the 1st District, the 2nd District and the 5th District. The 1st District pits Republican Representative Rob Wittman, who has held the seat since 2007, against Democrat Shannon Taylor, a Henrico County prosecutor, in a contest that Cook moved from Leans Republican to Toss-Up in the autumn. The 5th District pits Republican Representative John McGuire against former Representative Tom Perriello, a contest moved by Sabato’s Crystal Ball from Likely Republican to Leaning Republican. Those two races, together with the 2nd District rematch, are the reason Virginia is discussed as a House battleground state even though its Senate race is not rated as close.
The backdrop to all three House races is a redistricting fight that ended before the election. Democrats in Virginia had pursued a mid-decade redistricting plan that, supporters said, would have reshaped the delegation, but the state Supreme Court struck down the referendum that would have produced a new map, leaving the existing congressional map in place for 2026. That outcome preserved the current competitive shape of the 1st, 2nd and 5th Districts, rather than replacing it with a map that would have made several Republican-held seats much harder to hold. Candidates on both sides have therefore campaigned on the existing map, in districts whose recent presidential results were close, and voters will decide those seats on that map, not on a map that was proposed but never took effect.
Virginia Senate race: Mark Warner seeks a fourth term against Bert Mizusawa
Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat first elected to the Senate in 2008 and re-elected in 2014 and 2020, is seeking a fourth term, which he has said will be his last. Warner, a former governor of Virginia and a businessman before entering politics, has campaigned on universal healthcare, affordable housing and making technology companies pay for solutions to job displacement linked to artificial intelligence, according to his own campaign statements as reported in October. His opponent, Bert Mizusawa, is a retired United States Army major general who won the Republican nomination on August 4 with 51.5 percent of the vote, ahead of Marine Corps Reserves officer David Williams and financial accountant Kim Farington. Warner was unopposed for the Democratic nomination. Mizusawa, who previously ran for the 2nd Congressional District in 2010, has said that if elected he wants to focus on reducing spending and tackling the national debt, and he has also said that President Donald Trump could serve a third term in office, a claim that would require a constitutional change and that is presented here as his stated position, not as an established legal fact.
The polling in the Senate race has consistently shown Warner ahead, and forecasters have rated the seat as safe for Democrats. A Christopher Newport University poll completed on October 10, 2026, among 702 likely voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.00 points, put Warner at 51 percent and Mizusawa at 37 percent. A polling average based on two polls put Warner ahead by about 20 points, at roughly 53 percent to 33 percent. Those figures are polls, not results, and they describe opinion at the time the surveys were taken, but they do explain why the Senate race has drawn less national spending and attention than Virginia’s House races. Republicans have not won a Senate election in Virginia since 2002, and Warner’s long incumbency, fundraising advantage and prior winning margins are part of the reason forecasters have treated this seat differently from the state’s competitive House districts.
The Senate campaign has also been marked by an absence of debates. At least two proposed debates between Warner and Mizusawa were cancelled in the autumn, including an event sponsored by AARP Virginia that had been planned for October 7 at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, after Warner’s team said it could not commit because of an unsettled and busy official Senate calendar, and a League of Women Voters of Virginia exchange that was scrapped after the group said it had not heard from the senator. Warner’s team noted that Warner and Mizusawa had shared a stage on Labor Day in Buena Vista and said Warner looked forward to continuing the conversation across Virginia. Mizusawa’s side criticised the cancellations, saying the challenger was ready, willing and able to debate. Voters weighing that dispute should note that both sides’ accounts of why the debates did not happen are campaign claims, and that the absence of a debate does not, by itself, tell voters how either candidate would vote in the Senate.
Virginia Senate and House races 2026: the House battlegrounds
The 2nd District rematch is the centrepiece of Virginia’s House story. Kiggans, a former Navy helicopter pilot and nurse practitioner who serves on the House Armed Services and Veterans’ Affairs committees, is seeking a third term. She unseated Luria in 2022, after Luria had served two terms in Congress from 2019 to 2023. Luria, a Naval Academy graduate and retired Navy commander, won the Democratic primary in August with about 80 percent of the vote. The district, anchored in Virginia Beach and the Hampton Roads area, is one of the most competitive in the country: President Donald Trump carried it by less than three-tenths of a percentage point in 2024, according to one account, and by about 0.2 percentage points according to another, while Kiggans won re-election that year by about 3.8 points. The small differences between those figures reflect different ways of measuring the same close district, not a disagreement about the essential point, which is that the district is closely divided.
Polling in the 2nd District is thin, and that thinness should caution readers against over-reading any single number. A Christopher Newport University poll completed on October 10, 2026, among 702 likely voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.00 points, put Luria at 46 percent and Kiggans at 43 percent. An earlier poll from Tulchin Research, a Democratic-sponsored firm, in July 2026 among 700 likely voters, put the two candidates tied at 47 percent each. A polling average based on those two surveys put Luria ahead by about 1.5 points, at roughly 46.5 percent to 45 percent, and rated the race a toss-up. Forecasters disagree about how far to go beyond toss-up: Cook rates the race a toss-up, while Sabato’s Crystal Ball moved it from Toss-Up to Leans Democratic on September 28 or 29, and Inside Elections rated it Tilt Democratic. That disagreement is normal in a race this close, and it is a reason to describe the contest as competitive and unresolved, rather than as leaning firmly in either direction.
The other two competitive House races add to the picture without changing its centre. In the 1st District, Wittman faces Taylor in a district that includes Richmond suburbs, Williamsburg and Tidewater, and a Washington Post and Schar School poll reported in early October put Taylor at 50 percent and Wittman at 46 percent among likely voters, inside the margin of error. In the 5th District, which includes Charlottesville and Lynchburg, McGuire faces Perriello, a former representative, in a seat that forecasters have moved toward Democrats but still rate as favouring the Republican incumbent. Independent candidates are also on the ballot in the 2nd District, including retired Marine colonel J. Matt Baker and Geral D. Staten, and in a close race, even a small vote for a third candidate can affect the margin between the two leading candidates, though no forecast in this article treats that effect as predictable.
Virginia early voting: more than 1.1 million ballots by October 27
Early voting in Virginia began on September 18, 2026, and in-person early voting runs through Saturday, October 31, with Election Day on Tuesday, November 3. By October 27, more than 1.1 million Virginians had cast early ballots, according to reporting by Virginia’s public television station WTVR using data from the Virginia Public Access Project, a figure already about 200,000 more than the total number of people who voted early in the entire 2022 midterm cycle. By October 28, the Virginia Public Access Project total reported by Fox 5 DC had risen to 1,256,823 early ballots, compared with a 2022 early-voting total of 976,558 ballots, an increase of nearly 30 percent with days of early voting still remaining. By October 30, one tracker put the total at about 1.42 million ballots, including about 1.12 million in person and about 305,000 by mail. The differences between those totals reflect different reporting dates and different trackers, not a contradiction: the total rose as voting continued.
What the early-voting totals do not show is just as important as what they do show. A high early-voting total proves that many Virginians have already participated; it does not, by itself, establish which party will benefit or which districts will change hands. Virginia does not officially publish the party affiliation of voters casting early ballots, so any claim that the early vote proves a particular party is winning rests on modelling or on assumptions, not on an official party breakdown. Turnout was up over 2022 in all 11 congressional districts, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, with the largest number of early votes, about 169,000 by late October, cast in the 1st District, where Wittman faces Taylor. That district-level detail is useful as a measure of participation, but participation and outcome are different things, and the final result will depend on the full electorate, including voters who vote on Election Day itself.
Older voters have featured prominently in the early vote. Virginia Public Access Project data reported in late October showed that four out of ten registered voters aged 71 or older had already cast a ballot, more than five times the turnout rate of voters aged 40 or younger at that point. That age pattern, like the overall total, describes who has voted so far, not how they voted, because ballots are secret and early-voting totals do not reveal individual choices. Campaigns in both parties have used the early-voting period to bank votes from their supporters and to identify voters who still need to be contacted before Election Day, and the final days of in-person early voting through October 31, followed by Election Day voting, will complete the electorate that decides the Senate and House races.
Three constitutional amendments on the ballot, in brief
Virginia voters will also decide three proposed constitutional amendments, which passed the General Assembly in two separate sessions, with a House election in between, before reaching the ballot. Question 1 would protect the freedom to make personal decisions about prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion, miscarriage management and fertility care, protect doctors, nurses and patients from being punished for those decisions, and allow restrictions on abortion access during the third trimester except when the patient’s health is at risk or the pregnancy cannot survive. Question 2 would remove the constitution’s ban on same-sex marriage, affirm that two adults may marry regardless of sex, gender or race, and require all legally valid marriages to be treated equally under the law. Question 3 would provide for a fundamental right to vote, revise voter qualifications so that a person convicted of a felony is not entitled to vote during incarceration but is automatically invested with the right to vote upon release, and update the existing provision on voters found to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting.
Supporters of the amendments argue, in broad terms, that they would secure rights in the constitution that are currently protected only by statute or court precedent, or, in the case of marriage, remove language that has been unenforceable since the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges but was never removed. Opponents argue, in broad terms, that the amendments would go too far, remove existing safeguards, or make permanent changes that a future legislature could not easily revise. Those summaries are necessarily brief, because the amendments are not the main subject of this article, and voters who want the full ballot language should read the official ballot questions themselves before voting. The amendments will be decided by the same voters, on the same day, as the Senate and House races, and their outcomes will shape Virginia law regardless of which party wins the congressional contests.
What to watch on Election Day
On November 3, the first question will be turnout: whether the record early-voting pace continues into Election Day, and whether Election Day voters change the composition of the electorate in ways that early-voting totals alone cannot predict. The second question will be the 2nd District, where the margin is expected to be close and where a result may take time to call if the gap is narrow and mail ballots are still being processed under Virginia law. The third question will be whether the 1st and 5th Districts follow the same direction as the 2nd, which would suggest a broader statewide pattern, or whether they split, which would suggest that candidate and district factors mattered more than any single statewide trend. Observers will also be watching the Senate margin, not because the seat is rated as competitive, but because the size of Warner’s margin, if the polls are borne out, could be read as a signal of Virginia’s overall political direction in a midterm year.
Until polls close at 7 p.m. on November 3, every statement about who is winning in Virginia should be read as a statement about polls, ratings or turnout, not about results. Polls describe opinion at a moment in time. Ratings describe competitiveness as judged by forecasters. Turnout describes participation so far. Results describe votes counted after Election Day, and they are the only measure that decides who represents Virginia in the Senate and the House. Voters who have not yet cast a ballot can still vote early in person through October 31, or vote on Election Day itself, and the choices they make in those final days will decide a Senate race, eleven House races and three constitutional amendments that together make Virginia one of the most consequential ballots in the 2026 midterms.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from WHRO, Fredericksburg Free Press and Fox 5 DC.